A Grandma's fond Wish
by Latika Padalkar, Pune

I was lying in bed with high fever.  To cheer me up, my husband handed over my grand daughter's picture taken about a year ago.  There was my Sanjali, fair and lovely, her crinkled eyes and rosy lips curled in a smile.   The expression of innocent joy tugged at my heart.  Unknowingly, a prayer welled from within.  I folded my hands and wished that the precious little girl may never know disappointment-leave alone grief. Let nothing cast its shadow on that sunny smile.

    God almighty appeared in his great great grandfatherly visage.  In a voice so stern as to stern terror in my heart, he spoke "what an impossible and foolish prayer is this? I am not supposed to listen to such nonsense even if it comes from sixty year old woman".

    I was perplexed and overwhelmed.  Was my prayer all that unreasonable? I wondered.

    The omniscient God could read my thoughts as if they were newspaper head-lines.  "You unthinking old wretch!" He cried.  "Do you want to take away two best teachers from your precious child's life?"  He thundered.

    I couldn't quite guess the import of that accusation.  "Don't you think you yourself have benefited from disappointment and grief?"  He asked in a much milder tone.  There was something in the way he asked that question that set me thinking.

    "Yes, my lord, disappointment have always spurred me to redouble my effort to achieve what I couldn't in the first attempt"

    "That's better" He cooed.  "And what about grief?  He prodded me further.

    "Grief has mellowed me a lot.  It has gifted me empathy which is far superior to sympathy".  I replied humbly but with joy since I found the right words for a change to express my views.

    "So you are an achiever and an empathiser - a good combination.  Now tell me one good reason why your grand-daughter shouldn't acquire these qualities through her own experience just as you did through yours?"

    I was speechless at this logic.  was God trying to hoodwink me by flattering me? Or was He genuinely concerned about his in-ability to grant my impossible wish? He read my thoughts again as if on bold neon signs in a market place.  "I am not a trickster or a cheat, I am God, the creator of universe, which goes by the cyclical movements of action and reaction - cause and effect.  It is inevitable that there shall be disappointment and grief in every one's life.  Nobody can be saved from them.  But what I can do is to give your precious granddaughter the perseverance, the ability to get up every time she falls.   Secondly I can give her courage to face the grief and to truimph over it".

    "Will that satisfy you, old woman?" He whispered in my ear.

    More than satisfy me my Lord" I said with folded hands.n